University of Wolverhampton 2006/2007
Louise Cattrell
Experience of the natural landscape is central to my work. By direct connection and knowledge of that landscape the work reacts to the spectacular changes within the timescale of day, season and year. Part of that experience is the importance of physical scale from the limitless infinity of the sky to the enclosure of forest and wood; the eye moving from the panoramic to that of close scrutiny. This has particular resonance where the borders of sky, land and sea converge and depart.
Primarily a painter, the use of line is a defining part of how my ideas and new work develop and are explored. The diversity of process and the ability to manipulate the impact of an image within printmaking has always fascinated me.
An ongoing series 'Arboretum' is condensed record of different landscapes and times seen through a collection of etchings of trees. So far this has reached six with the intention of twelve. Alongside, monoprint using the drama of black and white, tone and mass in a converse way to etching brings together the qualities of line and surface in making an image. A recent mezzotint workshop with Katsunori Hamanishi enabled me to realise and coalesce the diversities within the etching and monoprint is for me a new and challenging process.
The opportunity offered by a place on the AA2A programme would allow me a concentrated period of time to develop the idea of using the three processes into a series; each image responding to the qualities of the other in making prints that define the idea of landscape in its natural state.
